Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac :: essays research papers

" carnal Laws should have mathematical beauty." This statement was Diracsresponse to the question of his philosophy of physics, comprise to him in Moscow in1955. He wrote it on a blackboard that is still preserved today.1     Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902-1984), known as P. A. M. Dirac, was thefifteenth Lucasian Professor of maths at Cambridge. He shared the NobelPrize for Physics in 1933 with Erwin Schrodinger.2 He is considered to be thefounder of quantum mechanics, providing the transition from quantum theory. TheCambridge Philosophical Society awarded him the Hopkins palm tree in 1930. He wasawarded the Royal Medal by the Royal Society of London in 1939 and the JamesScott Prize from the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 1952 the Max Plank Medalcame from the Association of German Physical Societies, as well as the CopleyMedal from the Royal Society. The Akademie der Wissenschaften in the GermanDemocratic Republic presented him with the Helmholtz Medal in 1964. In 1969 hereceived the Oppenheimer Prize from the University of Miami. Lastly in 1973, hereceived the Order of Merit.3     Dirac was well known for his almost anti--social behavior, but he was a constituent of many scientific organizations throughout the world. Naturally, he wasa member of the Royal Society, but he was also a member of the Deutsche Akademieder Naturforsher and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He was a foreign memberof Academie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and the Academie des Sciences,the Accademia delle Scienze Torino and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei andthe National Academy of Science. He was an honorary member and fellow of theIndian Academy of Science, the Chinese Physical Society, the Royal Irish Academy,the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the National Institute of Sciences in India, theAmerican Physical Society, the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research in India,the Royal danish pastry Academy, and the Hungarian Academ y of Sciences. He was acorresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.4 The world wide respecthe earned for his work was well deserved.     A prolific writer, Dirac create over two hundred works between 1924and 1987, mainly papers in physics journals on topics relating to quantummechanics. His book Principles of Quantum Mechanics , promulgated in 1930, was thefirst textbook in the discipline and became the standard.5 Some predictionsmade by Dirac are still untested because his theoretical work was so furthermostreaching, but many other predictions have been verified, assuring him of aspecial place in the history of physics.6     Dirac was three years old when Einstein published his famous papers on